Locker specifications are usually written around door count, which is the least useful number. A buyer's guide to compartment sizing, locking, ventilation and the questions worth asking before an order.
Start with what goes inside
Almost every locker enquiry begins with a door count. It is the wrong place to start, because the number of doors tells you nothing about whether the thing people need to store will fit. A twelve door unit with compartments too shallow for a school bag is worse than a six door unit that works.
Begin instead with the largest item that has to go in, and how often. A hospital staff locker holds a bag and a change of clothes. A school locker holds books and a bag, and is opened in a thirty second rush between periods. An office locker often holds a laptop bag and nothing else, but is expected to be secure enough that nobody thinks about it. These are three different products that happen to look similar.
Compartment count against usable volume
For a given outer size, every extra compartment costs you internal space: each divider takes its own thickness, and each door needs its own frame. Going from six compartments to twelve in the same shell does not halve the space per person, it reduces it by rather more.
The practical consequence is that high compartment counts suit things with known small dimensions, such as phones, wallets or keys. For bags and clothing, fewer and larger compartments almost always serve better, even when the headline number looks less impressive on a tender document.
Locking is a decision, not a detail
Lockers are specified with several different locking arrangements and they are not interchangeable:
- Hasp and staple takes the user's own padlock. The institution issues no keys and replaces no locks, and a user who loses a padlock solves their own problem. It is the usual choice for schools and gyms.
- Built-in cam locks give a tidier result and no protruding padlock, but someone has to hold the duplicate keys and manage the register. Over a few hundred lockers that register is real administrative work.
- Latch only, no lock is right more often than people expect: changing rooms and cloak storage where the point is tidiness rather than security, and where locks only generate lost key queries.
Decide who carries the key before you decide the locker. Retro-fitting a different locking type across an installed bank is expensive and rarely tidy.
Ventilation, labelling and the quiet problems
Any locker that will hold damp clothing, sports kit or shoes needs airflow, or it will smell within a term and corrode from the inside over a few years. Ventilation is usually louvres in the door or perforations near the top and bottom. If the specification does not mention it and the use involves clothing, raise it.
Labelling matters more than it sounds. Lockers assigned to named people need a holder or plate that can be changed when the person changes. Numbers painted directly onto doors cannot be reassigned and look poor within a few years of reallocations.
Fixing and safety
Tall lockers must be secured to a wall or floor. A tall, narrow steel unit with a full top compartment is top heavy by design, and a child pulling on an open door creates a genuine tipping risk. This is not optional in a school environment. Confirm who is responsible for fixing, that the installation surface can take it, and that fixing hardware is included rather than assumed.
Where lockers sit in wet areas such as changing rooms or near washrooms, the bottom edge is the first thing to corrode. Legs or a plinth that lift the unit clear of the floor are worth more than they cost, because they take the base out of standing water during cleaning.
Before you place the order
Four questions settle most specification errors before they are built:
- What is the internal size of one compartment, not the outer size of the unit?
- What locking arrangement is fitted, and who holds the keys?
- Is it ventilated, and is that adequate for what will be stored?
- Is wall or floor fixing included, and who carries it out?
We make lockers and steel storage to order at our own unit at Kantabanji, Balangir, under ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001. If you are putting together a requirement for a school, office or hospital and are unsure which of the above applies, describe the use and we will tell you what we would specify.